


And With The Curl of a Fingertip (You'll Be Mine Forever)

by vodkaanddebauchery



Category: Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Genre: Developing Relationship, M/M, Tumblr Prompt, Unbeta'd, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-10
Updated: 2013-07-10
Packaged: 2017-12-18 09:13:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/878145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vodkaanddebauchery/pseuds/vodkaanddebauchery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian Gray is an intolerably silly boy. <br/>(a request from tumblr.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	And With The Curl of a Fingertip (You'll Be Mine Forever)

**Author's Note:**

> Unedited, for the most part. I sincerely apologize for any mistakes or ramblings herein.   
> Still not sorry for shipping what was once an in-joke like a house on fire.   
> Kudos and comments are, as always, appreciated.

Dorian Gray is an intolerably silly boy. Hyde learns this early on, early enough to back out from the experimental, not-quite-business-relationship-not-quite-flirtation relationship they’re tentatively forging. If he had to speak in candor, he would fully admit to considering backing out, in fact.

(For though Edward Hyde might be a scoundrel, a villain, a blackguard, he is wholly honest and honourable where it counts: with himself.)

For one, Dorian Gray’s beautiful head is - tragically - irrevocably filled with romantic notions. He sighs over the cut of a jacket and the words of long-dead libertines, over Chinese ceramics and Turkish hashish and Swiss lace. His house, Edward finds when finally called over to discuss business, is filled with exotic plants and paisley and medieval tapestry; ornate bronze lozenge burners and priceless antique books in languages Hyde doesn’t recognize.

(Hyde isn’t choosy with accommodations, but he certainly wouldn’t choose that. He edges away from what he suspects is a crocheted lace doiley on the arm of an otherwise unoffensive claw-foot sofa and tries not to breathe when Dorian leans in to pour him another drink.)

For another - Dorian Gray always smells of a cologne so trendy and foppish it could almost be a lady’s perfume, and of lavender. When he walks into a room, every corner is pervaded by his presence - his aura, his scent - and it is as though four walls are not enough to contain the sheer magnitude of his being.

(Hyde does not care for colognes or anything else in the current fashion, but he can’t discard the notion that underneath the cologne and the wistful lavender he can smell a touch of decay. Rotting wood, he thinks, or the rank dribble of blood on a slaughterhouse floor.)

For yet another - Dorian Gray is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. He has a face like a sculpture by the ancients, or of a painting by the Great Masters of Italy, and the architectural fingers of a musician. His better smiles, leveled at Hyde over papers or over tea or even for no reason in darkened rooms of ill-repute, are as dazzling as pulling a knife.

(Hyde does not care for beauty in any of its myriad incarnations, but against his better judgment he finds himself wanting, wanting, wanting.)

And yet another - Dorian Gray kills with as little remorse as if he were butchering a chicken for Sunday dinner. An associate of Hyde’s further down the path of treachery than either of them care to tolerate slips - is caught - and before Hyde can do so much as bloody his nose Dorian is there on him, those lovely long pianist’s fingers around his throat. Dorian’s face becomes a hellishly contorted mask of a Hellenic Titan, or perhaps of Fury itself. When the traitor’s face is purple and his frenzied thrashing at last ceases, Dorian does not cast the body away like Hyde would. His hair is in his eyes and he lowers the body with great care and tenderness to the dusty floor and remains crouching over it for a moment.

When he rises and wipes his hands on his trouser legs, Hyde can see how starkly white the imprint of ten long fingers stand out on the corpse’s throat. Dorian is quiet. His cheeks are flushed, and though he does not smile at Hyde now, his eyes are flagrantly alive with dark fire.

He has just killed bloodlessly and beautifully, and he is an intolerably silly boy

(And just like that, Edward Hyde - against nature and his better judgment - falls in love.)


End file.
